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Lunch » Tags » Green Living » Reviews » Downcycling

Downcycling

5 Ratings: 4.2

the process of converting waste materials or useless products into new materials or products of lesser quality and reduced functionality

Downcycling is the process of converting waste materials or useless products into new materials or products of lesser quality and reduced functionality. The goal of downcycling is to prevent wasting potentially useful materials, reduce consumption of … see full wiki

Tags: Green Living, Eco Friendly, Green, Recycling, Reuse

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Downcycling Gives Trash Another Chance at Life

Mar 11, 2010

by Clay_Miller
posted in Green Living

Rating:

many products get downcycled to Plastic Code #7

Downcycling means the reuse of a product for alternative purposes or the recycling of material into lesser quality. Most recycled industrial nutrients (materials) lose viability or value in the process of recycling. This means they can only be used in a degraded form for components other than their original use. This may sound bad, but at least the materials are being reused and not thrown away.

Some examples of downcycling:

recycling plastics turns it into lesser quality plastic, resulting in a higher plastic identification code
white writing paper is often downcycled into materials such as cardboard and cannot be used to create more premium writing paper
re-using defective car batteries for lower-power applications
using rag towels for other cleaning purposes
often times, when people upcycle, individually downcycled parts are often involved
finding alternate purposes for obsolete technology (e.g. using an older computer to cue of a party playlist of music while a newer computer is available for everyday purposes

Downcycling is another way to avoid sending something to a landfill and finding a way to reuse or recycle it again. Downcycling can be eco-friendly and reduce your carbon footprint. The term downcycling is not too well known, but a green idea to be mentioned.

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RecycleEverything April 28, 2010

Clay, thanks for this contribution! I think you would be interested in 'Recycling Everything', -- a self-contained system that cycles materials within it, without the need for extraction of raw materials or landfills. The materials themselves have to be engineered to be recyclable. Right now, this is in the concept stage, but my organization is beginning to push to make it a reality. Please check us out at www.rebk.org.

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Ulalume March 11, 2010

Great review. The process of recycling isn't always as efficient as a lot of people might think (I used to think they used plastic water bottles to make more plastic water bottles), but it's better than having your trash end up in a landfill.

Clay_Miller March 11, 2010

Right. Recycling isn't perfect. It would be great if recycling could solve more problems, but physically many things aren't possible. So any way to reuse waste and make something useful that doesn't go into landfills work for me. Thanks.

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